Acquisitions, In-Licensing Opportunities, R&D Collaborations and Out-Licensing Projects centralize all information and exchanges related to the evaluation of an opportunity. They allow users to follow opportunities from creation until final decision or outcome and include options for collaboration among users as well as outside the application.
This article focuses on Mergers and Acquisitions.
This module is oriented towards company acquisitions. Asset acquisitions should be managed with in-licensing opportunities.
Acquisition Overview
The configuration and tabs displayed on an acquisition is similar to that of other opportunity types, with some exceptions described below.
- The top section of the form, or Overview, contains fields to describe the acquisition project, aimed towards the internal status and next actions. These fields include the linked company, lead investor, nature of transaction (i.e. deal type), and links to any ongoing in-licensing opportunities with the company already being tracked in the Inova application.
- In most cases, acquisition opportunities must be kept highly confidential and only certain users will have access to the module itself. In the case of particularly sensitive deals, an acquisition can also be marked Restricted and individuals or groups granted access to it via the Authorization tab.
- The company profile section contains additional details and financial considerations about the company being reviewed for acquisition. While these fields are technically part of the company object, by default they are not displayed on the company form for increased confidentiality.
- If the acquisition moves forward to contracting and one or more agreements are signed, those agreements can be linked on the Agreements tab.
Additional tabs
Below the Overview, additional tools are available in the tabs below:
- The Assets Roll-up shows all the assets in your Inova system that are linked to the company. This allows a clear view of the product landscape you are already considering as part of the acquisition.
Note: If you have the Thomson connector enabled, you can query Thomson for the company you're looking to acquire and import all of the assets of that company into your database (see this article). Then when you create the acquisition and link the company, all the imported assets will appear in the roll-up. - A workflow lets you track the acquisition through a defined process (see below).
- As with other deal types, the Review is available for requesting feedback and expertise from colleagues. Documents and emails can also be stored on them.
Workflow tab
As with In-Licensing Opportunities, the workflow ribbon (shown in the first screenshot above) and the new workflow tab are available to display your business process around acquisition deals, allowing you to easily view and track the opportunity through a set of pre-defined milestones and managed subtasks.
For more details about milestones, the ribbon, and the new tab, refer to Milestones and Workflow.